Women write because history will never be enough to name us. There are so many of us who have hidden ourselves in anonymous names, initials or pseudonyms, it seems that there is a tacit comfort in this authoritarian oblivion.
The poet from Colima, Cristina Arreola Márquez, gives us back the dignity that has been taken away by the newspapers that quantify the violence in red notes, the best sellers in the morbidity of a society diluted in “if it is not in my house it does not bother me "It doesn't happen to me," but many times everything happens in the house and it doesn't seem to stink.
In They call me crazy, from the publisher Chapter Siete, Arreola Márquez shows us a mirror of the reality that passes through us, extremely clean, so much so that the eyes, the feet, the hands hurt, evoking the epigraph of Dolores Castro, a hydrocalid poet who was linked to Chiapas through her close bond with Rosario Castellanos, that is why we do not I am surprised that the first presentation of this wonderful book is here, in Chiapas, because destiny usually plays at hiding in chance.
In this book, where poetry and narrative are intertwined, Cristina writes and describes from the poetics of pain, which at the same time is a testimony. It is inevitable when reading it that images of horror and uncertainty emerge, in the face of what seems inevitable in women: the fate of calamities that have sentenced us since biblical times.
And although it hurts, it was necessary, because our pain or that of others, does not disappear if we look away. We need to raise social and personal consciousness to get rid of the silence, raise our voices, embrace fear and let go of it so that it leads us to other paths, trust that the desolate panorama can be decolonized, that the camouflaged patriarchy shows its viscera so that it stops tearing away the ours.
I agree with Rita Sagato when she says that patriarchy is historical because it needs the mythical story, the narrative, to justify and legitimize itself. And how to stand before thousands of books that have been written, both by men and women, that disappear the latter by not recognizing them as a fundamental part of the same history. And if that were not enough, we also had to physically disappear, erase ourselves, mutilate ourselves, hurt ourselves so maliciously and painfully that the last breath must have been to keep silent.
I thank Cristina for her bravery, she showed her courage when writing They call me crazy . I don't think anyone who finishes reading it will remain indifferent. Something moves inside. Many questions arise to urgently ask: What has been your journey to dig into the depths of the human condition and give ourselves the opportunity to breathe through a poetic gaze, even when hundreds of flies surround us? I am sure that in your response we will find strength to navigate the stormiest seas.
*Text read during the presentation of They call me crazy, by Cristina Arreola Márquez, at the Rodolfo Disner Gallery, located in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas.